The Beautiful Tower of Babel

Last night I watched a TED Talks video posted by a friend on Facebook, discussing the philosophy behind modern education, and why it has become both inadequate to serving the world's continued economic interests, and the personal holistic interests of children. The speaker's (Ken Robinson) main point was that education is designed around a "factory mentality" born out of the first industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, and in conjunction with similar ideas brewing around personal freedoms and the connection between an individual and society.

One of many points that struck me was Robinson's emphasis that one of education's struggles is to balance teaching cultural identity to students, while teaching them globalization. It's the same struggle that hums at the core of public education–that effort to standardize, to make the many into one. In some ways, this is just what education should do, as no society can function at the most basic level without some shared beliefs and structures.

The flip side to this, however, is the reality of human complexity, and the inescapable fact that as multidimensional beings of infinite capability, we don't always fit into one mold. And perhaps we shouldn't.

Modern western culture teaches that at once both diversity and globalization are desirable virtues; but how can both exist simultaneously? At some point, one has to give in to the other.

The story of the tower of Babel is that originally, humans tried to build a tower up to God's level in order to make themselves all-powerful, and were punished by having this tower struck, and the people all on it, scattered to the four corners of the earth. Diversity of language, culture, and thought, supposedly comes from this original "punishment." Separation, or individuality, therefore, is the result of our confounded efforts to be one.

Of course this is just a slim interpretation of a cultural myth loaded with symbolism, and many scholars do not even apply a concept of punishment to the original story, so much as that of an etiology tale of how civilization came about. But my point is that Babel is beautiful. Our children's Babel is beautiful, and the Babel told in Egypt, Norway, and Malaysia, and in tiny, remote Amazon villages, is also beautiful.

Globalization teaches us to see each other as "one," and that is so important an idea–and yet, it makes me worry that the universality that we supposedly believe we are reaching for, is not universal and is not as liberating as we think. It's a dominant culture (undeniably often the West) that, for better or for worse, is spreading around the globe, and potentially eradicating other sounds of Babel, and even potentially squelching them in its own offspring.

Instead of seeing globalization, like education, as an opportunity to engage in a multi-voiced dialectic, it is so often pushed as a single truth, or to quote the TED Talk lecture, "There's only one right answer…and it's in the back of the book." In American public education, curriculums geared towards standardized testing heavily outweigh approaches more contextually designed around individual classrooms.

In the age of standardized testing, there's no longer an active search for truth, only the dead declaration that wonderful One-ness is coming (but it's our One and not yours). It's the same age that is drugging up so many kids with dangerous ADHD meds, obsessively tracking their academic progress in ridiculously unhelpful charts and numbers, and then continues to cut music, art, science, and recess. I can't think of anything more destructive to our economy than teaching our children to stop being creative, to stop innovating, to stop taking in information with five senses and to process it, play with it, imagine what it could become. You think a strong economy is built on a generation of people who simply learned how to regurgitate answers in Scantrons?

So I guess this has me both thinking about our attitudes towards educating our own children, and how we "educate" the world. I think globalization is inescapable at this point, but I don't mean to say that's a bad thing. In so many hopeful ways it is inspiring. But it makes me wonder what happens to diversity and individuality, as One-ness takes over. I hope it will be a One-ness built on all of Babel, not just some.

The Boondock Saints

Yesterday evening I watched The Boondock Saints with some girlfriends. It was the first time I'd seen the movie. The violence was not usually what I'm eager to watch, but it had some beautiful moments and a properly suspenseful plot. The kind of film that I can understand why it becomes iconic.

I couldn't help being bored, however, by the lame roles of the few female characters in the film. Now, you can come right back and say there are plenty of "women's" films that have cardboard male characters, and you're absolutely right. You can make your blog post about those. Right now I'm blogging about these.

There were a small handful of women throughout the entire film, in scenes lasting around 1 minute 30 seconds. They pretty much had no lines, and when they did talk, the dialogue was always vaguely unnecessary, something extraneous to the plot of the film. Some of them, I presume, were forensic scientists, since they wore white lab coats and had their hair pulled back in important, no-nonsense ponytails. But they never seemed to contribute any actual scientific findings to the crime scenes which they were investigating.

At one point in the film, towards the end, the main detective, who is a riot, is going nuts at the scene of one of the final crimes, a suburban home where massive shootings have taken place both in and outside the home. He can't figure out who these guys are, even though the Boondock Saints are amateurs and doing stuff that he says you "can't do in movies" (cue comic drum and cymbals!).

Meanwhile, the female forensic scientist is taking blood samples from a splattering on one of the new jersey-blue-blood-suburban-home pillars, and making over-exaggerated gestures of exasperation, making me think that she was not classically trained in Method acting. She expresses her distress at not being able to get a good blood sample, and hyped-up detective man comes over to help her out of what should be her job.

He leans over and sniffs the blood, has a conniption about it, draws out the drama of telling everyone what he's discovered, and waves a smear of the blood in the scientist's face, causing her to flail her head away and make a face. Eww! He put something icky near her!

It's ammonia, he announces. The Saints have sprayed it on their blood so that you can't get a decent blood sample. Those Irish scamps! Everyone gasps at the detective's brilliance, and the female scientist makes a figure of wonder and chagrin (she doesn't talk anymore; her dialogue moment is over). Ah, ammonia. Well, now we know.

But why didn't she know? Ammonia is a pretty common smell; it's in your urine, in bad fish, etc. And she's a scientist. I know one of the comic subplots of this film was to present the detective as brilliant and everyone else he works with as a hopeless rube, but even so. Would it have killed the director to let the scientist be the one to say "oh, it's ammonia," and then let detective have his monologue rant? I mean, this is a bloody scientist, but she can't figure out why that blood sample won't take! What a waste of a lab coat.

I bring this up mostly because when I watch films like these, the women in them are so one-dimensional and dumb, and I feel forced to identify with them. Maybe that's just how I watch movies.

Still, let me reiterate that The Boondock Saints is an artistic and powerful film, with a complex look at social justice. I get why it is iconic. But I get annoyed that portrayals like these are generally disregarded because something is iconic. It's like how slavery is kind of okay in Gone with the Wind because awww, look at those pretty dresses! There was a moment in Saints where the Don wants Rocco to tell a joke with the word "n*****", but I feel pretty sure (or I hope?) that the audience is supposed to feel suitably appalled by it.

Well, I've probably offended a great many people with this. If it helps, just pretend I was wearing a white lab coat when I wrote it and disregard the whole thing.

* photo courtesy of http://splashpage.mtv.com/2009/08/12/the-boondock-saints-coming-to-comics/

the 18th century: does it even matter?

so some of my friends have been wondering why this blog ended up being called "the 18th century guide to modern living" when i don't often write about the eighteenth century. well, the answer is that sometimes i do write about it, but that the eighteenth century isn't literally the focus. it's more of the inspiration. it's not all about substituting "s"s with "f"s, or about wearing tight knee breeches.*

in college i truly indulged my lifelong love of jane austen, and around her i built my knowledge of the eighteenth century in literature and history courses. from them i developed concepts of social justice, community activism, education between the sexes and between social and economic classes, and the modern application of those values. i also credit my dear alma mater, gettysburg college, for giving me a profound sense of my ability and responsibility to critically engage with the world.

but the eighteenth century’s sense of interconnectedness has incredible relevance to the modern world. it emphasizes that we are all part of a larger whole; that our self worth is reflected in the worth of the community to which we belong. modern crises in economy, education, environment, and human rights, require actions that are guided by moral character; we have the power and the responsibility to positively apply the insight gained through understanding our connectivity.

exploring these concepts in a historic and modern context is imperative in order to prepare ourselves to think critically about how we will conduct ourselves in our professional and personal interactions. austen was one of those people who cared about such things, and taught me to care.

these are lofty words, but i think you'd better start off high, or your standards will be too low to get anywhere worthwhile. so now i like to write about a dozen different topics–gender, marketing and consumerism, education, really anything that looks interesting. i never forget, however, that in the back of my mind i'm always shaping how i interpret social justice from my mental 18th century guide to modern living.

*although i am a firm endorser of tight knee breeches.

moving beyond the "firsts"

i have to do a report on a figure in cultural studies for one of my classes, so i chose angela mcrobbie, who, it turns out, is awesome. here she is, looking witty, stylish, and fully tuned-in to the ideologies that define gender in our culture:


feminism today, is, i think, a largely unpopular word for people of my generation. unfortunately, if you say you are a feminist, aka you believe in the equal representation of women's voices, people assume that you hate men and love nascar and burning effigies of paris hilton (actually...would that be fun? let me come back to that one).

but angela mcrobbie is this voice of such good sense and clarity, like princess leia…she does not want feminism to die for this generation of young men and women because it might mean losing a language that allows women's experiences to be acknowledged. but at the same time she recognizes that if the language of feminism doesn't serve women as it originally intended to, then we need to ask ourselves, what will serve?

because the main point is that we tend to think we have "won" wars against race, gender, sexuality, etc. but just because we have made progress (and GREAT progress that we should celebrate) doesn't mean the work is done. as my good friend darryl, a great public speaker, cook, and black member of his community who was invited to speak at this year's martin luther king jr. celebration, said: "why do we celebrate hearing about the 'first black man' to do this, or the 'first woman to do that'? i want to live in a world where we're beyond hearing about 'firsts.'"

if we could also move beyond a world where "diversity" means the token black friend or the token gay friend in an otherwise all-white heterosexual cast to a feature film, that would also be nice.

the danger of living in a culture that stresses equality is that it tends to see it where it doesn't exist, and the willful blindness can become an even more invidiously oppressive system than the formal barriers that earlier movements of the 20th century sought to eradicate.

tears of the giraffe

in botswana children learn the lesson of the tears of the giraffe. the story goes that there are women who sit, weaving their baskets, and the giraffe wants to give them something to help, but has nothing to give, and so she gives her tears for them to daub on their baskets. the lesson is that everyone has something to give, even if it is only their tears, their compassion.

alexander mccall smith taught me this story in his series on botswana's finest lady detective. this month has been full of grief for so many people--the loss of friends, family, beloved pets, and some long and tiring days. i wonder that we can bear it all. but i see now that the heart has room to take all of the grief in the world and give it back into something good: an embrace, a listening ear, tears to daub on baskets.

"i suppose that it means that we can all give something," she said. "a giraffe has nothing else to give–only tears." did it mean that? she wondered. and for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange, stilt-borne body camouflaged among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought of all the beauty that there was in africa, and of the laughter, and the love.

the responsibility of belonging

i think people underestimate the extent to which they can touch the lives of others. in a thomas hobbes world-view, we could argue that everyone is out to get each other, but i feel rather that there is more room to spread love than hate–and certainly more responsibility to do so.

i interviewed four great young people today, the last of which particularly touched me by her enthusiasm and genuine commitment to changing the world through her service efforts. i have been thinking about various career paths, and one of them is to possibly "go to the other side," as we say in the world of education, to teach and counsel at a private school. hearing her talk about her school's traditions and atmosphere and intellectual drive made me want to be there myself.

did you know you have that power? i think we forget that in most everything we do, we are not only acting for ourselves, but representing everything with which we are associated. you are your town, your high school, your college, your country, your family. for better or for worse, to some degree we have to accept the responsibility of belonging.

james sherry, in his essay "pride and prejudice: the limits of society," reminds us that we have

"…an eternal reminder that we are all part of one community, and not even the best of men can be totally beyond the responsibility and the reproach of belonging to it."

how will you make your community one that you're proud to belong to?

moral economy

i found on my computer today a short piece commenting on edmund burke, jane austen, and the idea of a 'moral economy' that i'd written senior year. my curiosity was roused to read it again in light of the present state of our own economy, and it struck me as very much relevent.

i had written it after listening to my english professor, beth lambert, stand up and discuss her views of what she called burke's 'chivalrous' ideals for government when he advised parliament to rethink their treatment of the american colonies.

jane austen, too, touches on this in the microcosm of her country villages. above all else, above her wit and her charm and her ability to see through all of the bullshit of the world, her first and primary goal is to show her readers what it means to act in the name of social justice.

though small worlds, her examples of moral and immoral leaders are subtle reminders of the dangers of social irresponsibility. sir thomas bertram in mansfield park struggles to control his slave populations in antigua, while back in england his children think of nothing but vanity, money, adultery and drinking. meanwhile elizabeth bennet teases that she really began to fall in love with mr. darcy "from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at pemberly."

but of course she does. that is when she discovers his humanity–that he is a competent and fair landlord, doting on and protective of his sister, and runs a moral household.

i hope we have come to a point where we will begin to consider more deeply, as i think we have as of late, of how the character of those whom we elect to represent us, reflects the our own character. i don't mean that the private lives of our leaders need to be splashed on every tabloid–but to quote a line from an old film, "my pa always said, 'never do anything you'd be ashamed to see written up on the front page of the news.'"

judgment

i had a frightening and strange dream last night. i was in the jungle, or in some tropical place, and was pushing through bushes and tree branches trying to follow a stone path that wound through the jungle floor, and then came to a wall of rock. a set of stone steps were carved into the rock and i followed them up into the open air.

i was with my family, i think, or at least my dad, and when we reached the top of the stairs we found ourselves on the edge of a low precipice that sloped back into the bush, with little huts and other 'village'-esque elements all around. someone beckoned us into one of the huts and when we went in, we saw little statuettes and i realized that this was some tourist trap and felt mildly put off by the pandering of these pieces of religion.

then the dream changed and i was walking by myself through jungle again, only this time the foliage shifted into something more or less what you'd see in new england or parts of pennsylvania. i was following a long line of people who were marching towards a clearing up ahead.

here's where the dream becomes sickening. every single person in this line had a pike thrust through their body and jutting out of their mouths, almost in the way people used to be beheaded and then have their head put on a pole for display. it was awful. it was like they were still alive, and yet they were all suffering such agony. were they murdered, dead, alive?

i ran ahead but in doing so i had to run down the whole line of them, face after face of horrible disfigurement, but still i ran until i came to the clearing. and then before me were suddenly two lines, one on either side of me, of these poor people, and the lines tapered to an end at the clearing where a podium stood in the middle and an old man bent double over it, clutching the sides for support.

he had long scraggly white hair and an equally long beard, and it hung about him in a matted mess. his eyes were sunken in and his skin was completely lifeless. and then i felt a wave of it. some great evil had happened because of him–it was he who was responsible somehow for the mass murder of the bodies snaking towards him, and his milky eyes were cold, as if he sensed their protest.

then the speared bodies raised their arms and they were suddenly holding bows and arrows. it was a tribute. they had been conquered to be part of some army, and they were supposed to display their arms. in one movement they raised their bows, at first i thought in salute, but then they all aimed them at the old man. i watched him as his face contorted with rage and suddenly there was a flash of lightning.

by now i was standing practically next to the old man, and watched him look down in his left hand, in which had appeared a small ivory obelisk. it had an etching of Jesus Christ on it in dark reddish brown tones. he rubbed his thumb over it and looked up at the bodies before him, momentarily uncertain.

my own indignation and anger increased towards him as i took in this holy image of peace. my mind whirled around this strange thought from out of nowhere: Christ is angry that he has murdered in His own name. this is the final judgment.

as the old man looked down at his hand and then slowly up again at the arrows aimed at him, i sensed his fear, but i was pulled back and drifted away from the clearing before i could see what became of him, and the dream faded.

i woke up, feeling sickened. some of the messages in my dream are obvious, and yet, it was so random.